Different conversation(s), but yes. Talk recently here about people being slow in RP because of too many other distractions. It's the entire reason a lot of people have personally told me that they cannot RP until they get home, but they hang out on the game all day to chat.
Anyone who works in an environment where the norm is MANY MANY TOOLS GUYZ will recognize the overhead and harassment of flipping from tool to tool to tool to accomplish things. My entire career right now (and indeed, much of the strategic effort of IT nowadays) is consolidation.
I would inject here that the separation of duties into multiple tools and windows defeats the purpose and will not be a positive. If you can build an interface to /source/ all of those different things into one window, and make that window as accessible to as many platforms as possible, you might have traction.
Context-switching is already deadly in MUSHing. We all know that.
@tat
Oops! Something has gone wrong. Please check your error logs. uninitialized constant AresMUSH::WebApp::Engine
So back to my point: I am happy to debate this from a technical perspective. If you envision ways that things can be done better, start with some constructive mockups.
In @Arkandel's web-based CharGen, someone start building a webpage with all of the data, and we can start looking at ways to interface that submission with the MUSH.
Again, happy to help here. In fact, this sounds like a good project for my own game. I'll start on it this afternoon, and see how feasible things are. It just so happens that it will actually help my project(s) effort(s) to lay this out more.
In the end, I think that a lot of people either vehemently disagree with the proposed changes, or they are on-board with them. What I am trying to do is bridge a gap, through code, and to do that, I'd need to have a much more concrete conversation about proposed changes, features and expected functionality. It would all need to be examined, just like all code does.
@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:
Fair points, agreed.
As long as the 40-something women can't use 20-something actresses for their PBs, then I guess that this level of PB policing/approval process can make some sort of sense.
(waits, because here it comes)
@tragedyjones said in Alternative Formats to MU:
I am curious what other similar, but not MU based types of formats exist, or that people may have tried.
I am tinkering with the idea of a multiplayer persistent game using alternative formats, possibly linking multiple resources. One idea I have is to combine a game with a Wiki, a sub-Reddit, and a Discord server, where staff can use Google Drive to track character sheets.
From there, you will recall, the conversation diverged into distraction, split attention on tools/interfaces, and here we are.
Conversations naturally wind their way, as people don't just post "Yeah me too" constantly to threads on ideas. That's what Upvotes and Polls are for. Threads are for asking questions, giving two cents' worth, and propositions.
I asked to see your vision, in order to get an idea of what you foresee. I understand that you don't want to get attacked for it, that's fine. Conversations can be had about innovation outside of this board, but in my experience, most people don't chime in on announced projects here. Not one person has said a word when I mentioned working on a new MU client. When people propose new MU*s, if it is WoD, the conversation invariably shifts to "How are you different", but if you are not WoD, it is invariably "How can you be more mainstream".
There aren't a lot of developers here, and that is honestly the target of my side of the conversation, not the players, not the theme staffers, but the coders. The people who would be critical to this conversation if anything other than "Wow, would be really nice to have" is to be explored.
@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@Rook One day, I will. But that day will be when I am much further along to where it isn't really fucking shitty when I start that thread and get a bunch of people not suggesting improvements or possibilities, but just 'this is a horrible idea; it will never work for MU*s and you are horrible for wanting a web-based UI'.
You know, I liken this thread to someone walking into a developer meeting and sitting down, raising their hand when the team lead says "We need innovation. What are everyone's thoughts on how we can spice things up, punch it up a little?"
There's going to be some pushback from those of us who don't immediately glom onto your vision. Someone's going to hand you a marker and say "Whiteboard this for me, I don't understand."
If you want to find allies in bringing an idea to life, you're going to have to endure that. It's no different than someone going into the Announcement forum and starting a thread where they say something as ground-breaking as: "I'm starting a MUSH where everyone gets Wizard bits, there are paid, professional Storytellers and it'll be free for the first 100 players to get through CharGen."
People are going to clamor with questions, nay-saying and demands to discuss how you plan to do all this without fundamentally changing How Things Work on the game. It's a fair and valid conversation to have when you're designing something new.
Conversation is needed to sow the seeds of any new idea, especially here. Someone has stepped up in front of the Shark Tank and proposes a New Way to MUSH. We? We are the Sharks. You are the one with the idea, and if you want buy-in, you have to convince at least a few of us that your (not @Meg specifically) idea has merit from a feasibility and viability standpoint. I think we have the opportunity/audience standpoints well laid out, at this point.
EDIT: Also? LOE vs ROI is a real thing.
Uh... why 'Um no'? I just did a Google image search on that name, realized who you were talking about, and thought to myself: "Why? He looks like a stereotypical liberal arts college sophomore?"
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@meg
Believe me when I say this, because I do mean this with the utmost of curious sincerity:
I want to see it.
Start a thread, post images or give links. I want to see what you envision here, as it will likely greatly shift my perspective in this conversation! I am entirely open to that, and would be happy to alter my own thinking and vision.
@roz Please read my latest. Again, I'm not against UI. That is not my argument. I am trying to come at this conversation in an engineering feasibility standpoint as much as any sort of personal preference thing.
I get what you guys are saying. I think that we're just talking at two different levels.
The reason that I say that the UI isn't the issue is not because I don't recognize the value of dropdowns in a choice list being hella faster than typing it out after looking through a help file.
I just think that, even with UI changes in a client (whether app or web), players face much larger hurdles than just the command structures. You will see a fundamental shift in how MUSH is played, period, if you (as @Arkandel proposes in his example) remove the physical movement from room to room on grids. You will start seeing people hiding/ignoring information that is, in today's MUSH standards, designed to be read, followed and dealt with in an IC way. That's just one example, and I don't think that I'm being old-dinosaur by pointing this out.
Shift every rule, check and validation into a web client, and you will have a complex web client. Why? CharGen is complex. Shift every +command into a web client, and you will get a complex web client. A window for seeing who's in the room, who's online, including filtering for "Everyone in WHO", "My friends", "Just in this Room", or "My Faction". That alone speaks to things being complex to learn, potentially lending to people missing things.
Imagine +watch now being desktop notifications (and yes, people would ask for it). Imagine the web client interface for managing that functionality. Pages and channels, too, in their own windows if you like, but do we now do Slack-like @-mention notifications? What about +beep/+alert?
Sit back and try prototyping out functionality of a MUSH into a web client. That is a good first step to having this conversation, in my opinion as an engineer. Let's start going through actual UI/UX exercises and proposals.
I get that you propose and think that it will somehow lower barriers of complexity in entering players' experience. I get it. I just don't think that it is as easily solvable as you think. And, if it is, I am not yet there with your vision, and I think that I (and others) need to see what you envision. I'm happy to help in this project, as I said before. Promise. EDIT: I'm already deep into working on it here.
But during the envisioning phase of any project, we need to all agree on goals. In this case, that is a concrete UI/UX.
@Sparks
Everything you have described is possible, entirely, with every MUSH and MUX server out there today. The problem is simply the client.
@Arkandel
I just don't see the difference between typing things out and filling out a webform, when it comes to making a MUSH character, other than the UI. You still have to write up a description, you have to select all the nibbly bits of Stats, Attributes, Powers, Weapons, Merits, blah blah blah...
That is work.
An incoming player dabbling around might toy with it, but if they aren't immediately hooked by the potential of great depth, the storytelling, the new venue in playing a game... the UI isn't going to snag them in, in my opinion. I may be wrong, I often am.
Pile on top of that the two biggest fun-killers present on almost all MUSHes out there:
You really think that a player sitting on a webpage is going to sit there and wait for hours and hours for this? I don't.
Once again I state: UI is not the barrier to entry, nor is the back-end protocol.
MUSH is just not a venue for the short attention span, those that are lazy or those that have a very low motivation to learn something new. I put my money on that statement. You all disagree, and that's fine, I'm just stating repeatedly that I don't think that UI changes, protocol changes, or whatever, will fundamentally change MUSHing past some sort of invisible tipping point of ease-of-use.
I think you're right, @Lotherio. I know it is a barrier for me to play most MUSHes, and I happen to know how to do it, none of that barrier crap.
Theme and Setting are huge in the pull of interest to new blood and old blood alike. The lack of original games out there is a terrible lack of draw to factor into the equation.
Whether the interaction is via telnet protocol, web sockets or another TCP medium doesn't matter. Evennia proves that.
As has been said in this thread, the protocol itself is old, venerable and outdated.
But at face value, it is just text being sent back and forth. The channel in which it is process doesn't matter to the end-user.
I have hung out on MUDConnect, and in their forums, you will find that a lot of players there aren't into the RP-centric focus of MUSH. Go there and read the threads. They want the hack-n-slash and coded combat and singular style of play instead.
A lot of the resistance is the dependence on other players to get their fix, having to wait for poses, people being actually available for RP. With a MUD, you can go into a room and beat/bash/win for two minutes, then step back out. You can't do that with roleplay on a MUSH.
So it is, in that case, not a UI limitation. There are far more MUDders than there are MUSHers, every time that I've looked. Many MUDs have gone graphical/web, and grown, so there is a large argument in that favor there.
@Auspice
I would argue "She played a 23-year old this year in <movie name>. If it's good enough for movie audiences, it's good enough for MUSH."